A Critical History of 2012 Mythology John W
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“Oxford IX” International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 278, 2011 c International Astronomical Union 2011 Clive L. N. Ruggles, ed. doi:10.1017/S174392131101266X A critical history of 2012 mythology John W. Hoopes Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, 1415 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA email: [email protected] Abstract. The notion that December 21, 2012 will bring physical catastrophes, a transformation of consciousness, or even a New Age is an unanticipated and unintentional consequence of early speculation by credentialed academic experts. It has grown as a result of its subsequent interpretation through the lens of speculative, counterculture metaphysics by individuals with both academic and non-academic backgrounds. This article provides a historical review of the most significant contributions to the emergence of the 2012 phenomenon. Keywords. 2012 phenomenon, astrology, Maya 1. Introduction Assertions of ancient Maya prophecies associated with the end of the 13th baktun and its GMT-correlated date of December 21, 2012 have resulted in a bewildering plethora of publications, websites, documentaries, workshops, conferences, and self-help seminars with little basis in either archaeology or astronomy. Just as concerns about Y2K fu- eled massive investment in software development, underwriting the ‘dotcom’ bubble of the late 1990s and contributing to the emergence of the World Wide Web, the 2012 phenomenon (Sitler 2006) is creating a bubble in New Age metaphysics. According to popular mythology, the ancient Maya predicted that this date would be accompanied by either global catastrophe or a ‘transformation of consciousness’ that would usher in a long-awaited New Age, anticipated by mystics and Theosophists on the basis of the Book of Revelation and Medieval Arabic astrology. Predictions include ‘earth changes’,1 a global flood, a supervolcano, a dramatic magnetic or physical shift of the Earth’s poles, the arrival of Planet X, visits from extraterrestrials, an increase in telepathy, and a shift in negative attitudes about the benefits of cannabis and metaphysical revelations (Joseph 2007; Stray 2009). The origins of the phenomenon can be traced to comments made by respected academic Mayanists and its promotion has included speculative statements by scholars, some of whom have doctoral degrees. 2. Overview At present, there are over a thousand books in print that address the 2012 phe- nomenon. Three represent scholarly critiques (Aveni 2009; Van Stone 2010; Restall & Solari 2011) and there are only two scholarly articles (Sitler 2006; Hanegraaff 2010). The meme ‘tipped’ (Gladwell 2000) in 2007. It was discussed in counterculture circles at the Burning Man festival, where in 2003 the central icon stood atop a Mesoamerican-style pyramid before its own apocalyptic incineration. However, its historical antecedents can be found in the millenarianism of Joachim de Fiore and its roots in the revival of as- trology and the ‘concordance of astronomy with history’ by Bishop Pierre d’Ailly. The latter had a direct and profound effect on the thinking of Christopher Columbus, whose 1 A phrase coined in the early 20th century by psychic Edgar Cayce and associated with Atlantis. 240 A critical history of 2012 mythology 241 Libro de las Profec´ıas sought to use sources from antiquity and ecclesiastical scholarship to prove that his prophesied discovery of ‘most remote land’ would precipitate the re- conquest of Jerusalem, the Second Coming, and the end-times events described in the Book of Revelation. “Columbus turned to the writings of Pierre d’Ailly in order to im- prove his understanding of the connection established in Christian eschatology between the imminent last days of the world and a providential view of history. His aim was to locate his own enterprise within this scheme” (Columbus & Rusconi 1997: 21).2 Colum- bus was compiling this “Book of Prophecies” on his fourth voyage in 1502, during which he encountered a trading canoe off the Bay Islands of Honduras and interviewed a local cacique on Guanaja. This first encounter between Europeans and the Maya world was the occasion on which the existence of the continental mass of Central America became understood and the episode in which ‘Maia’ first appears in European records (Academia de Geograf´ıa e Historia 1952). The Maya were associated with confirmation of eschato- logical mythology from this initial encounter, which was followed by the introduction of Western millenarianism first to the Antilles and Panama and subsequently to Maya converts in the Yucatan. From a Western perspective, there has always been ‘New Age’ thinking about the ancient Maya.3 The 2012 phenomenon is the result of speculative academic hypotheses, some discarded long ago and some not. Scholarship on the ancient Maya—academic and otherwise—has included many crackpots. Lord Kingsborough, who commissioned facsimiles of Mesoamer- ican codices and descriptions of Maya ruins in the 1830s, believed Mesoamericans were the Lost Tribes of Israel. Charles Brasseur de Bourbourg, discoverer of the Popol Vuh and Bishop Landa’s Relaci´on, found narratives of past destructions that led him to speculate about similarities between Maya culture and Plato’s Atlantis, asserting direct connections with the lost continent. Waldeck illustrated Maya reliefs with Classical and Egyptian embellishments. Desir´e Charnay suggested that the Toltecs were Aryans who had migrated to Mexico from the Himalayas. Augustus Le Plongeon, the first excavator of Chich´en Itz´a, identified the roots of Freemasonry through ancient Egypt and Atlantis to the Yucatan some 11,500 years ago. His work inspired Ignatius Donnelly (1882; 1883) to trace not only the Maya but all civilizations to Atlantis and assign catastrophism a role in ancient history. The persistence today of discarded theories about the Maya reveals a separate, esoteric tradition of scholarship that has accompanied academic Maya studies much as astrology has accompanied astronomy (Campion 2008). Its goals are metaphysical, spiritual, sub- jective, and distinctly not Western science. Esoteric Maya studies preserve archaic forms of knowledge that support New Age ideologies but do not withstand objective scrutiny. Specific assertions about 2012 derive from statements made by reputable scholars—the experts of their time—that were misinterpreted in unanticipated ways. These include a 2 Columbus made special note of a passage from Seneca’s Medea, published for the first time in 1491: “ ‘During the last years of the world, the time will come in which the Ocean sea will loosen the bounds and a large landmass will appear; a new sailor like the one named Tiphys, who was Jason’s guide, will discover a new world, and then Thule will no longer be the most remote land.’ . He wanted, moreover, to clinch the argument that these events were part of a larger eschatological perspective. Toward that end, in a margin of the letter to Ferdinand and Isabella in the manuscript of the Book of Prophecies, he wrote the same rubric that precedes the Latin lines of verse and placed a sign indicating that in the final version of the letter a paragraph, inspired by those verses, should be inserted before the one identifying premonitory signs of the final days of the world found in the Bible” (Columbus & Rusconi 1997: 34). 3 Columbus himself employed apocalyptic imagery associated with astronomy in his inter- action with indigenous people, using the prediction of a lunar eclipse on February 29, 1504 to intimidate natives of Jamaica into provisioning his ships (Morison 1942: 653–654). 242 J. W. Hoopes chain of speculative inferences that runs from Ernst F¨orstemann to Sylvanus Morley to Michael Coe. F¨orstemann (1906) made reference to ‘destruction of the world’, ‘apoca- lypse’, and ‘the end of the world’ in his commentary on the last pages of the Dresden Codex. These were repeated by Morley (1915), who paraphrased the earlier scholar and added his own embellishments, such as references to a universal destruction of the world and a ‘final all-engulfing cataclysm’ in the form of a Great Flood.4 Morley repeated this in The Ancient Maya (1946) as he appropriated uncited details from Alfred Tozzer’s (1941) translation of Landa. In so doing, he conflated pre- and post-Conquest stories, mentioning flood legends likely introduced by 16th century Christian missionaries, in turn influenced by speculation concerning a ‘Second Great Flood’ predicted for 1524 (Pankenier 2009). It is not at all clear that stories of ‘universal’ floods (past or future) have pre-Conquest Maya origins. The basic workings of the Long Count calendar had been published by Goodman (1897), who also provided detailed tables of 1,897,000-day baktuns, which he asserted were conceived in a 73-unit ‘grand era’ that included the 53rd beginning on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Zotz (now correlated to April 1, 8239 BCE), the 54th beginning on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Cumku (August 11, 3114 BCE), and the 55th beginning on 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3Kankin (December 21, 2012). However, this work drew the attention of only a small circle of scholars. Goodman made no calendrical associations with astronomical events or catastrophes. Morley (1946) was the first to explain Maya cosmology to a general audience. Themes of Maya collapse and destruction from his book entered the counterculture with Beat writers in the 1950s. William Burroughs studied Aztec history and Maya writing at Mexico City College in 1950 and Allen Ginsberg made a long visit to Palenque in 1953. They were among a wave of tourism to Mexico after World War II that delivered a ready audience for Maya studies amidst a growing counterculture. Maud Makemson (1951), an astronomer, was the first to associate 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 Kankin with end-of-the-world prophecies on the basis of the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin. However, her translation of the date and its meaning were flawed, resulting in a spurious Colonial-era prophecy that she correlated to 1752.